Carnival of Dolls
by DezoPenguin
Summary: When a night breed escapes Shido's pursuit, he finds himself drawn into a strange city, where nighttime revels hold a deadly secret. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

The girl's legs burned as she panted for breath. Her legs ached, calves and ankles throbbing with pain each time one of her high-heeled shoes completed a step. The shoes were never made to move faster than at a brisk walk, and sparks of pain shot up through the girl's feet each time one clicked off the pavement or splashed into one of the puddles left by the evening's rain. She ran anyway, though, because she had no other choice.

If only there was someone to help her! She could not imagine how she could be so alone in a nation as dense in population as Japan. Surely, if she could scream for help someone would hear, would come to her aid, but she couldn't scream. That took oxygen, and she had no breath to spare. Her body was drained already from the effort of fleeing. In a few dozen more yards she'd be at the end of her strength. She would fall, helpless to do anything more.

Then she would die.

It was almost a mercy when the iron grip closed on her shoulder and spun her up against the wall. At least she wouldn't have to face it after that moment of despair. Her shoulder burned, and blood seeped from where claws had punctured her flesh. Three eyes leered at her with lavender fire in them, and a forked pink tongue licked at fanged teeth. Its free hand raised to deliver the killing blow.

Suddenly, explosions of scarlet light burst against the monster's side, and it was torn away from her. The girl's legs gave out, and she sagged to the wet pavement, but as she slipped into unconsciousness, relief filled her heart. Though she didn't know what had happened, she'd seen the fear on the monster's face.

Tatsuhiko Shido saw the fear, too. The droplets of his own blood that he'd flung at the night breed had hurt it, and the hunter now knew it had gone from predator to prey. Hopefully the girl it had been stalking would be all right.

"Let's finish this, then," Shido murmured. The night breed might have been possessing a living human being, but it had already killed, the human heart abandoning itself to darkness. All that could be done now was to keep it from hurting anyone else.

Shido brought his finger to his lips and bit down hard enough to pierce the skin. Blood welled up from the cut; a vampire's power was in its blood and Shido's answered to his will, growing and forming itself into an ornate crimson sword. With the vampire's strength behind it any weapon was deadly, but the bloodsword was much more. The breed sensed its danger; it scrambled to its feet and ran.

Shido was caught between the need to pursue and the need to help the injured girl, but the sound of footsteps behind him told him that he didn't have to make that choice.

"Yayoi, look after the girl; I'll take the breed."

Yayoi Matsunaga was already reaching for her cel phone when she knelt by the fallen woman. The beautiful NOS agent would have preferred to be in at the kill, but the vampire could follow the breed much faster than she could. Besides, it was nice to have someone with official standing–and someone human–on hand when the ambulance came. It could save them no end of trouble.

The night breed was moving faster than any human could manage, but Shido's own leaps covered as much ground and he wasn't burning himself up with the effort. It was inevitable that he'd run the breed down, until at last they reached other people, a crowded street. The breed dove into the throng, shedding its unnatural self as it did, letting its human host resume control.

It was a good plan, Shido conceded. He couldn't tell which of the twenty or so people had been the breed, and the human form looked nothing like the three-eyed monster with its hunched back and row of fins down its spine. Too, while Shido had learned to sense the subtle miasma in the air that the night breeds exuded, the stench of darkness, in a crowd this size he couldn't pin it down to one specific person. It was an excellent plan to shake off pursuit. It might have even worked, had Shido not known what the breed's host looked like. He hadn't been there by accident, after all. He was a detective, even if his agency did confine itself to supernatural cases.

Shido let the bloodsword go; it dissolved back into the blood-drops it had been summoned from, then faded to nothingness. Other than that, he needed to alterations to blend into the crowd. Shido's handsome face, long hair, and old-fashioned three-piece suit and string tie were memorable but by no means inhuman. He entered the flow of pedestrians, following the breed at its own walking pace. Its instincts would be to return to a place of safety, probably the human man's home. Shido would follow it and finish the job there. He was cautious in his pursuit, though, doing nothing to draw attention to himself. The one thing he desperately wanted to avoid was forcing a fight on the breed among the crowd, where by mischance or spite it might take someone to the grave with it.

This time, though, his fears proved groundless. The breed did not notice as Shido shadowed him down the street two blocks, then east one block to an attractive suburban home. It was a home for an affluent family, but the host lived alone. Was it part of a plan for the future, a future now cut short? Or just a monument to one man's ego?

Shido went right to the door and found it locked. Since there was no point in holding back now that he was out of the crowd, he slammed his foot into the door and kicked it open. He found himself in an ornately designed foyer in an opulent Western style. It reminded Shido vaguely of his days in Europe long years ago. The tiled floor led into a large central atrium from which doors extended in all directions. A staircase led up along the left-hand wall to a balustraded landing that circled the room. Moonlight shone down through a skylight, creating diffuse, shifting shadows as the thinning clouds swirled across it. The stench of blood and darkness was everywhere.

_Movement._

Reacting purely on instinct, Shido flung himself aside as an array of umbrellas and canes rose from an umbrella stand in the foyer and launched themselves at his back. More than one was tipped with a blade, something again more common in nineteenth-century Europe than in the modern world. The sticks hit the far wall, most clattering to the floor while one of the bladed ones stuck macabrely in the wood paneling.

"Enough parlor tricks!" Shido cried out. In response, a dark shape crashed through the balustrade above and plunged towards him among chunks of splintered wood. Shido dove aside again and the breed's talons sheared into the imported marble time that covered the atrium floor. Raking his hand across his teeth, Shido summoned up the bloodsword once again and struck back. The dance of death began.

The bloodsword clashed against the eight-inch silver blades that tipped the night breed's fingers, making them chime like bells. The breed was quick and strong, Shido had to admit, but its talons would not be enough to defeat him. Even as he thought this, the creature's tongue lashed from its mouth like a frog's, wrapped around Shido's sword-wrist, and flipped the vampire, catapulting him up towards the landing and the shattered stubs of the broken balustrade.

Shido grunted in pain as the broken wood pierced his back and left thigh. He pulled himself free, glad that certain vampire legends were not true, only to find the breed almost on top of him. IT had launched itself on its powerful hind legs and ten silver spears were arrowing at the vampire's torso. Shido swung the bloodsword in a cleaving arc to fend the breed off; his swipe caught his attacker just before it reached him and sent it tumbling along the landing. As it got to its feet, Shido saw a line of violet ichor weeping from its scaled chest. It snarled in pain, an echoing metallic noise like no living creature should make, then turned and sprang down the landing, running past walls hung with oil paintings in a variety of sizes.

"Oh, no. You're not getting away from me this time."

Rather than giving chase, Shido hurled the bloodsword at the breed. It spun through the air in a lethal pinwheel, crashing into the night breed's back. The force of the impact and the creature's own momentum carried it forward, and it collided with the wall at the corner of the landing, striking full against a large painting over the top of the stairs. The body slumped to the floor, then was carried over the top step by its own weight and went tumbling down the staircase. Blood spattered the painting, staining the scene of a Renaissance city during festival season with scarlet.

Red, not violet.

As soon as he realized what had happened, Shido charged down the stairs, but it was too late. The corpse of financier Yukito Abe lay crumpled on the tile. The breed had given up the body and allowed the host to die rather than accepting the wound and trying to fight on. It was rank cowardice, but it had worked. The breed had escaped from the body in its natural form and slipped away to seek a new host, a new human heart to corrupt and drag into the dark so the night breed could attain the light.

Shido pulled the sword from Abe's body, then let it revert to blood. He looked at the painting, seeing the scarlet stain lying across the bodies of celebrants in fantastic costumes.

They'd have to begin all over again.

-X X-

"Mr. Shido!" Riho Yamazaki exclaimed happily when Shido and Yayoi returned to Shido's office. "You're back early!" Riho was a pretty sixteen-year-old with brown hair pulled back by a bow and let dangle in a waist-length foxtail. Only her pale skin hinted that she, too, was a vampire.

Shido had changed the girl herself when she lay dying, her chest slit open in a contemptuous act of Shido's own blood-sire and former lover, Cain. She'd been an innocent victim, a pawn in the twisted relationship of the two night walkers. Shido had predicted it, had foreseen that if Riho stayed around him she would stumble irrevocably from the path of decent living, but he'd had no idea how soon it would happen or that he himself would be the instrument. He'd been selfish to let her stay on as his assistant, selfish again to condemn her to eternal darkness. Riho had asked for it as she lay dying, but she'd had no idea of what she was asking, while Shido knew all too well.

Riho claimed to have no regrets about the change, but it was obvious sometimes that she was having trouble adapting to her new state, to the things she'd lost and the things she'd gained alike. It gnawed at the back of Shido's heart, the fear that one day his Riho would be unable to bear it any longer, that she'd be dragged by despair into becoming another monster like Cain.

Would it have been kinder to just let her die? Perhaps so, but that choice was gone forever. Riho was eternally caught in darkness now, just like Shido himself, but that was just her body. If her heart, too, fell to the night, he didn't know if he could endure it.

"Mr. Shido?" she asked hesitantly.

"Yeah, Shido, what gives? Yayoi hit you on the head after you made a pass at her or something?" _That_ was Guni, a fairy that had attached herself to Shido when he'd first arrived in the city. A foot-tall green woman with devil wings and plenty of attitude wasn't a storybook fairy in the Eastern or Western traditions, but there was something appropriate about it in a spirit of the modern urban sprawl.

"Mr. Shido wouldn't do that!" Riho snapped.

"He's a little distracted because the breed got away," Yayoi suggested, shutting the door behind her.

"Oh, man, so the Shinjuku Slasher is still out there?" Guni moaned.

"The breed will need to find a new host," Shido explained walking past the women to his desk. "That will take time, so we should be able to track it down."

"And we rescued its latest victim; don't forget that," Yayoi contributed. "With four murders and four disappearances so far, this breed wasn't holding itself back."

Yayoi had a point, but it also made for all the more reason why, Shido thought, they needed to catch the breed right away. He circled his desk and reached for his chair.

"Mr. Shido! What happened? Are you all right?"

He blinked in confusion.

"It's the back of your suit," Yayoi explained. "Riho hadn't seen it until now."

"Geez, you're a mess," Guni said. "That suit is a total loss. No wonder the breed got away. I'm surprised you even got the host."

"Oh, no; Mr. Shido, you shouldn't be walking around like this. You should–"

"It's all right, Riho, really," he assured her. "The wounds were minor and have already healed."

"Bet Yayoi liked that," Guni quipped.

"Mmm, no such luck, though if you need a little pick-me-up, Shido..."

Riho broke out into a fierce blush; more than likely it was she the others were teasing.

"I don't think that will be necessary," Shido explained. "Dawn's not too far away, and we need to get started tracing this breed. It's had a taste of life in the light, and it won't want to give that up. It's start looking for a new host soon."

"Do you think we can tell what was important about the first host?"

Yayoi had a good point. Low-level breeds generally just grabbed at what they could get, a corpse or a living person whose mind was clouded by drugs or drink. The more powerful breeds, though, did not possess their hosts by force. Instead they would make twisted bargains with their victims, using their not-inconsiderable power to give their host what he or she craved, be it fame, artistic talent, wealth, beauty, revenge, or anything else that was beyond their reach. In return, the night breed could use the human's body to attain life in the light and to satisfy its own unspeakable cravings for blood and flesh. Often the crimes committed worked out to be a synthesis of the breed's goals and the human's. Yukito Abe, for one, had been a frequent patron in life of the teenaged prostitutes he'd murdered as a night breed. When the breed found a new host, its victim profile would be different.

So what was it about Abe that had made him special? If they could deduce that, it would go a long way towards finding other potential hosts and protecting them before the darkness took them, too.

"I think we'll have to, if we want to finish this before a new round of killings begins."

"What I don't understand is, why did some of the women disappear?" Riho asked. "Did you find any of them at Abe's house?"

"No," Yayoi told her, "we didn't, other than eight earrings lined up on his dresser, apparently one taken from each girl."

"Well, that confirms what our investigation found, that the same breed committed both sets of crimes." That had been one of the trickier points of the case, Shido reflected. Each bloody mutilation murder had been followed by a disappearance. Other than the choice of victims, the crimes were completely different in type. Human serial killers and murderous breeds were similar in that they followed patterns. A pattern might escalate, showing more and more violence, but Shido didn't know of a human or breed that alternated between two patterns.

This detail all but demanded that there be two criminals, but it had been firmly established that there was only one, and it had been that evidence that had let Shido catch Abe in the act and rescue his prospective ninth victim. Two plus two made four, no matter that five would be a more convenient answer.

_Wait._

There _were_ two killers, weren't there? There was the night breed, and there was the host Abe. The victim profile fit Abe, but the crimes?

"They might have been choosing the same victims," Shido said aloud, "but not for the same reasons. That's why the crimes balanced out, first a murder and then a disappearance. The breed and Abe were fairly dividing the 'spoils' of their efforts."

"I think you're on to something, Shido."

"But which crimes are the night breed's, and which are Mr. Abe's?"

It was Yayoi who answered that one.

"The slashings were probably Abe's preference."

Shido nodded.

"The killings were ritualized, but not cannibalistic. Most of the time a breed kills because it has an uncontrollable lust for human flesh and blood." He glanced at Yayoi; their eyes met in a knowing gaze, both of them remembering the past. "Most of the time."

"There's more, though," Yayoi added. "The NOS searched Abe's house from top to bottom. We found no sign of the women he'd kidnapped, except the stolen earrings. There was nowhere to dispose of the bodies on the premises and, more than that, no evidence he'd raped or tortured them there. No one can clean up _that_ thoroughly. The initial investigation showed that Abe definitely didn't have a second home or other hideout, so nothing could have happened off-premises."

"So where did the women go?" Guni asked. "Okay, so you can't figure what he did with them, so it was probably the breed, yeah, but even if you blame the supernatural 'cause you don't have any better ideas you still have to figure out what the breed wanted."

Shido nodded.

"You're right."

She spread her hands smugly.

"Of course."

"If we know why the women vanished, we'll learn the breed's pattern, and that will tell us what kind of host it seeks."

He'd failed once to stop the bred, and that failure ate at him. Guilt, though, would accomplish nothing. The only thing that mattered was to find the night breed as soon as possible and save lives.

_What do you want? What did you do with those people?_


	2. Chapter 2

Shido awoke as if from a dream, the kind so vivid and real that its ghosts were more real than the waking world, the kind that lingered throughout the day like a long-forgotten memory. The golden beams of sunset wove their way through the heavy brocade curtains covering the window, though none of the gleaming rays touched the bed where Shido lay. That was important somehow, he recalled, though in that state between dream and waking he could not quite remember why.

He threw off the sheet and rose from the bed, his naked flesh pale in the room's shadows, a silver contrast to the gold light. His clothing was laid out for him, and he quickly donned smallclothes, lace-cuffed shirt, snug white breeches, gleaming black knee boots, and a green coat in a color that matched his eyes, trimmed in golden-amber braid that also matched his eyes. The incongruity of that thought did not strike him as odd; it did not, in fact, strike him at all. A starched cravat went about his throat; his nimble fingers tied it into an ornate knot with skill born in days of long practice. An emerald stickpin secured the folds of lace, and a white ribbon tied back his long hair to keep it manageable. He glanced in the mirror, verifying that his appearance was all it should be, and was struck by a faint spark of humor at the thought. Why? No matter, it was but a passing fancy.

The last item of clothing was a mask, a simple domino. He slid it over his face, then turned to the door. There was no need to linger; he was alone in the room and strains of music from outside beckoned him on. Shido left, then descended the stairs and was greeted at their base by a fat man with a waxed black moustache.

"Ah, Maestro, I had feared for a moment you would not wake by sunset."

"Would that be so terrible?"

The man looked at him as if stricken.

"Maestro, this is Carnival! To miss but a single hour of the festivities would be a tragedy beyond compare!"

It was quaint and theatrical, and yet so obviously heartfelt that Shido was touched.

"What about yourself? Are you not going out?"

"Maestro, I am but a humble innkeeper, and my pleasure is to see that each and every one of my guests enjoy themselves to the utmost. You are not long in our city, and will soon pass on along your way, whereas I am always here at this time. So go on, Maestro, and let this night be always a fond memory in your heart."

Shido smiled, and left the inn, beckoned on by the music. A hundred tunes seemed to leap from instruments and voices scattered throughout the city, yet merging together into a single harmony that was the soul of Carnival. The scents of perfumes, of flowers, of heady wines and roasted meats and spun-sugar confections filled the air. Iron poles at the street corners were capped by lanterns of colored glass whose flames sent garish radiance everywhere, while iron cressets mounted to buildings held burning flambeaux to banish the darkness.

Through the gaiety Shido walked, surrounded always by masked revelers who laughed and sang, ate and drank, danced and celebrated all around him. This was Carnival, and everyone, whether clad in phantasmoragic costume or simply masked as he was, seemed to be positively bursting with life, living it to the fullest with reckless passion and pleasure. Revelers caroused, lovers kissed, and enemies brawled, holding back nothing. Entertainers merged with the crowd; Shido saw clusters around actors and pantomime-artists, jugglers, fire-eaters, magicians, and minstrels. A fiddler with the pointed black goatee, headscarf, and earring of a stage Gypsy played while a bear danced.

Bemused, Shido's smile grew. A paunchy gentleman in motley and a dandy in domino and top hap screamed vicious insults at one another, then at the height of their rage suddenly broke off in fierce laughter as if at some absurdity, then flung their arms around each other's shoulders and strolled off as if they were the best of friends, calling for wine and women. It was wild, perhaps insane, but it was earnest and driven, this craving of the crowd for sensation, for emotion. Each and every one of them seemed to be striving with all their heart and soul to live as fully and freely as they could.

"For who knows when Carnival shall end?"

Shido flinched in surprise; the words had so perfectly answered his thoughts. They came from a figure next to him, swathed in a hooded gray robe. The hood was up, casting the face in shadow, but Shido's keen sight pierced the darkness effortlessly to see a white full-face porcelain mask, painted like a harlequin. The mask's mouth was level, but its eyes laughed at Shido's surprise.

"Is that not what you were thinking?"

"Yes, I suppose it was."

"Indeed so, for Carnival is a time of celebration and joy. After Carnival we remember and we lament, but for now we live. We love, we hate, we revel. Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain are our companions, and we clutch any one to our hearts as eagerly as another."

A strange philosophy, Shido thought, and yet its evidence was there all around him. There was an appeal to it, besides. What, after all, were goals and purposes but reasons to give life meaning? To make sure, that, above all, one's allotted span was not wasted?

The harlequin face's eyes were eager as Shido thought of these things, and he was curious to know what lay beneath the mask and robe. Was it a man or woman? Young or old? The enveloping folds of the gray cloak concealed all. Even the voice was impossible for him to place; he could have been speaking to anyone, or everyone.

Something was wrong with that thought, but he somehow could not place it.

"But you are a visitor to our city, are you not?" the masked figure asked.

"I am," Shido answered.

"And will you find what you seek here, I wonder?"

"What...I seek?"

Did the porcelain lips curve into a smile, or was it only the mask that made it seem that way?

"All who come here are seekers. If you came here, it is because you need what can be found at Carnival, the thing you have sought whether you know it or not."

"The thing I sought..."

"Tarry not, seeker," the harlequin suddenly laughed, "for you have not forever to find your way." It pointed dramatically up and behind Shido, towards the face of a great clock tower which began to peal the hour, seven chimes one after the other. When Shido turned back to the robed figure to see what it had meant by its cryptic hint, there was no trace of it. A jester clad in green and orange motley strolled, bells jingling, through the very place where the harlequin-masked figure had stood, juggling torches that each burned with a different-hued flame. The juggler walked on, but the robed figure was gone, and Shido was alone in the crowd.

_Well, then, if one way is as good as another, then I'll take my lead from the clock._

The streets he passed through were quaintly medieval in style, with buildings of gray stone and wood that reared above the streets, taking on color and warmth from the carnival lights while during the day they would be cold and forbidding. The clock tower was set in a high spire that reared above castellated battlements as of an imperial palace. Behind it, the sky had been swept clean of stars and even the moon was only a faint sliver, drowned by the lights of the city below. Shido entered a broad square dominated by a fountain in which a chariot raced before a cascade of water. Was it meant to depict a heroic charge, outstripping the tide, or instead the final moment before the driver and steeds were engulfed? He could not say.

Then an act of crude violence impacted on his attention. A woman in an ornate dress and garish feather-trimmed mask was being forced back against the stone wall surrounding the fountain by a man dressed much as was Shido. She squealed in fear as the man tried to tear at her clothing.

At once Shido strode forward, seizing the man by the shoulder and pulling him back. His intervention sent the man stumbling back several steps in surprise; the dandy barely regained his balance without falling.

"So! A cavalier steps forward!" the man bellowed. "But a cavalier without a blade! Tch, but what sport is that?" The dandy's hand dropped to his waist, and in another instant his ornate brass-hilted rapier was drawn, the sword's tip wagging as tease and threat at Shido. "I shall chastize you severely for your inattention to detail."

Shido then surprised himself with the smooth way his body reacted to his opponent, shifting balance into a countering stance almost as a reflex, while his mind gathered details about the swordsman that would reveal his likely next move. When the attack came, Shido was perfectly ready. He smoothly dodged, letting the thrust at his head pass harmlessly over his shoulder, then stepped forward and grasped the dandy's sword-hand, wresting the blade out of his opponent's grip.

"Clearly it is you who needs the lesson," he replied.

Shido dropped the rapier, seized the swordsman by his coat lapels, and tossed him into the fountain with a splash. The crowd roared with laughter, while the woman he'd saved flung herself against him.

"You beast! Oh, you beast, to do that to him!" she shouted, pounding at his chest with her tiny fists, but her face did not match the words. Her cheeks were faintly flushed, and there was an excitement in her eyes, a look that said she found his danger, his effortless, easy mastery of another and his quick use of violence thrilling.

Shido knew that look well. _Where from?_ He had seen it many times in the past. _When?_ There was a certain kind of person, the sensation-starved, who was intoxicated by such things, by battle and danger and the exercise of power by one over another.

A memory flickered in his mind's eye, of himself and another man, his long blond hair encircling his body, golden sun to Shido's moon. They lay naked on crimson silk; a voluptuous woman was pressed between them, but she was meaningless, merely an object serving the two men's passion. Then the memory was gone, before he could put names or meaning to it, only to be replaced by another. A tall, elegant woman in formal court dress regarded him with the same heated gaze as the one he'd just rescued, and arched her head to bare her throat.

_Her throat? Why?_ There was something there, too, something Shido ought to know–

Nothing. It was gone, like dust on the wind, and the woman was gone too. She'd moved on, it seemed, to other arenas where she might perhaps find what she wanted, if she even knew what that was.

Perhaps she was no better than he was, lost while looking for something she couldn't name.

"Ah, Maestro!"

The voice cut like a well-honed knife through his confusion. It was strong and bold, the voice of a confident, self-assured man despite the lesser status implicit in his form of address. It came from below and to his left, and Shido turned to look at once.

"You seem to be at your wit's end, Maestro," continued the speaker. He was perhaps four feet tall, dressed in yellow and red motley to resemble a dwarf from some noble's court, but his face was boldly handsome, if saturnine, with a strong jaw not concealed by his neatly trimmed black beard. A fool, possibly, but one who was perhaps less so than his masters.

"You might say that," Shido admitted. "I find it hard to keep a clear head."

The jester laughed heartily, as if Shido had told some hilarious joke.

"Trouble keeping a clear head! I shouldn't wonder at that, my friend. Indeed, if you see that as your problem, Maestro, then it's no surprise you are looking so lost."

"And how is that?"

He tapped his thick, spatulate forefinger against his temple.

"Your head, Maestro. This is Carnival, do not forget. Your trouble is not that you are having problems using your head–no! Your trouble is that you are trying to use it at all!"

A shout rose up from the crowd further along the street, several voices raised to cheer some event. The jester did not turn and look; whatever it was did not interest him.

"What do you mean?" Shido asked.

"This is not a time to stop and think! This is not a time for philosophy and reflection! It is a time to _act_, a time to _feel_!" He thumped a powerful fist against his chest, over his heart. "If you let thought and reason rule, then you will never find what you seek."

"Wait! How do you know that I'm looking for something?"

The jester laughed, a booming sound all out of proportion to his size.

"All who come here seek something!" he roared. "You would not be here if you did not! Now go, Maestro, and search with your heart if you hope to find your way!"

-X X X-

"Mr. Shido?" Riho called. "Mr. Shido, good evening!"

He didn't answer. She poked her head around the door and looked out into the office. It was deserted.

"This is silly," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "I might need more rest than he does, but I didn't sleep _that_ late!"

"What, did Shido go off and leave you while you were snug in your coffin?"

"Guni, where is Mr. Shido?" Riho asked, the need for information outweighing her desire to zing back.

"I don't know; I haven't seen him around this morning."

"That's strange. Even if he goes out on his own he usually lets us know where he's gone."

"Maybe he's still asleep?"

"Maybe."

Riho went back down the hall to the closed rooms–closets, really–that the vampires used as bedrooms. Shido's door was usually locked; ever since a recent incident he'd begun taking that basic precaution when he slept. This time, though, the knob turned when she twisted it, and the deadbolt did not hold the door shut.

"Mr. Shido?" she said quietly.

"Is he in there?"

Riho shook her head. The room was windowless and dark, but the vampire girl's eyesight had no difficulty in noticing the open and empty coffin.


	3. Chapter 3

"I have to think there's a connection to our current case," Yayoi declared. Riho's first action upon discovering Shido's absence had been to call her, in case they'd begun the investigation during the early evening. Yayoi hadn't known any more than Riho, and so had come right over.

"How do you figure that?" Guni said.

"Mysterious disappearances don't grow on trees."

"Do you mean...that the night breed did this?" Riho asked hesitantly. It wasn't that she didn't understand the logic, but that she didn't _want_ to. The idea that a breed could take Shido bodily away, without leaving evidence or alerting either Riho or Guni, was terrifying to her.

The idea of an eternity of unlife without him...

No she wouldn't think of that. _Couldn't_ think it.

"I can't be sure, but the similarity can't be ignored."

"But Mr. Shido beat the breed last night," Riho protested. "It got away, yes, but it did lose, and it didn't even put up a serious fight. How did it get so much power, so quickly, and in the daytime besides?"

"It must have found a new host," Yayoi considered, "and not an ordinary one, either."

Guni perched on Riho's shoulder.

"A new host would give it freedom of movement," she observed, "but to be able to come here and make off with Shido?"

Yayoi sighed.

"No, it doesn't make sense, does it? Not unless the breed is a lot tougher than it looked."

"It's too bad we can't convince Shido to carry a pager or cel phone. At least then we could track him."

"Somehow, I don't think giving a government agency the ability to locate his whereabouts would be acceptable to a vampire."

Riho shivered. Yayoi had a point. She herself was a trustworthy woman–more than that–but some of her co-workers had very different motives and agendas.

"Yeah, but the last time he got himself lost he spent three days stuck at the bottom of a well. If he's going to make a habit of vanishing we need to put a leash on him."

Different people, Riho knew, reacted to trouble in different ways. When Guni got worried, she always tried to cover it with more than the usual amount of bluster. Only if she was completely terrified did she drop the attitude entirely and say what she meant. A year ago Riho wouldn't have understood that, but she–all of them, really–had been through a lot since then.

"Yes, but that was an accident of battle," Yayoi pointed out. "This is probably an enemy action."

"He's still lost, isn't he?"

"So, we have to solve the disappearances," Riho said forcefully, cutting into the debate. They both turned to look at her, surprised at her tone. "If we learn what the breed did to the other people, we'll learn what it did to Mr. Shido. And we have to find out _fast_, or else..."

She still couldn't say it.

-X X X-

The bells of the clock tower chimed again, eight times, eight to call the blanketing darkness and banish the last lingering thoughts of day. The Carnival was in full swing, the streets filled while elegant palazzos turned into festhalls for those restrained souls who sought only the company of their own class and did not care to go out among the masses. Though, Shido supposed, perhaps what went on behind doors and within walls was darker and more grim than the honest revels of the city. Decadent tastes and cruel pleasures were often the coin of the wealthy and titled, who had ceased to value small joys since they were so easily obtained for them.

Blighted souls, he thought, who had lost their human hearts while still living.

Again, Shido pictured the blond man in his mind's eye, the image called up by the direction of his thoughts.

_Look at them, Shido._ His voice was deep and rich, faintly accented. _They are foolish and pathetic, caught up in their own mortality. They are like mayflies. They are born, they mate, they breed, they die. No matter how they strive, they can do nothing, for they are but specks in the eye of Time._

There was something there in the memory, something important. Shido sagged back against a nearby wall, trembling as the thoughts danced like shadows from a candle flame around his mind's edges. There was a secret to it, something implied there, something about Shido himself. He wanted to know, but he also did not, because whatever it was wasn't _just_ important. It was also, Shido knew, frightful. Horrific.

Was this what he was seeking? This secret? More likely it was the opposite if at all, a way to avoid it. Or it might be utterly irrelevant, merely a fact of his life that had no part to play here in Carnival-time.

"Young man," a voice creaked. "Young man."

Shido's attention was pulled away from the whispers in his mind and memory.

-X X X-

"These aren't just kidnappings," Yayoi said. She had the case file spread out over the coffee table, hunting for any scrap of information, any clue to Shido's whereabouts. "In three of the incidents, the victims were seen talking to someone matching Abe's description, but only once did he apparently pick the girl up. The murders were just what they seemed, vicious killings by an evil and deranged mind, but these disappearances..."

Riho, meanwhile, was sitting at Shido's desk, her laptop logged into the NOS's criminal history database. She was attempting to cross-reference as many details of Abe's crimes and his life with past cases, in order to find some common ground. It was not an easy or rewarding task, but she kept at it with grim determination.

"I never realized how perfect a host someone like Mr. Abe would be," she said.

"Huh?" Guni flew over, curious.

"It's these results. There are so many cases from the past where his particular attributes were involved, that it's making it very slow going. For example, he was forty-two, a bachelor, and lived alone. He had no close family, no one to care for..."

"Yeah, I see what you mean. It must be pretty lonely to live like that. There'd be all kinds of unfulfilled desires, and not everyone is strong enough to accept that."

"Abe wasn't strong enough to accept much of anything wrong in his life," Yayoi snorted. "He gave himself everything money could buy."

"So why wasn't he married?" Guni asked.

"Probably he was too much of a twisted jerk, even before the night breed came along, to ever attract a woman to anything except his money, but he was smart enough to recognize the golddiggers for what they were. Not that that's all that hard, if you're not a man blinded by desire."

"So that's why Mr. Abe sought out those women."

"I guess he figured that if was just going to be paying for services, he ought to be up-front about it."

"But he was obviously unhappy. I suppose he found it easier to blame the girls he killed for his suffering, than to admit it was his own flaws that were at fault?"

"Especially when there's a night breed telling him he can have whatever he wants without compromising anything–except for giving up his soul, of course," Guni added waspishly.

"He's an art collector, too. That's a group of people that seems to be especially vulnerable."

"I wonder why that is?" Yayoi asked.

"'Cause you'd have to be crazy to spend all that cash on that junk."

Riho ignored Guni and answered seriously.

"Mr. Shido told me once that the night breeds aren't attracted by ordinary desires for money or power. It's deeper, more passionate hopes and fears, strong emotions that call to the breed. A collection isn't just pretty decorations or valuable investments, it answers something deep in the soul of the collector. They have the strength of emotion it takes to abandon your soul to the night that someone who just wants money doesn't have."

A faint smile played around Yayoi's lips as she looked at Riho.

"That's pretty insightful for someone who used to make lunch with extra garlic for a vampire."

Riho looked sheepish.

"It's just how I felt."

"No, I meant it. That's a good idea; why don't you try narrowing your search to that? You might get through things faster."

"All right." A few clicks of the mouse, a clatter of keys, and the search began again.

-X X X-

"Young man, are you all right?"

Shido opened his eyes. The woman before him was old, ancient. A wig of white hair with ornate ribbons and jewels crowned her head, with a mask depending from the forward edge to cover the upper half of her face. The skin revealed was lined and weathered by a webwork of wrinkles, and her hands, one of which clutched an ornately painted fan, were like gnarled claws of bone, or the reaching branches of a tree in winter.

"Yes, thank you," Shido said. "A memory only."

The beldame hawked and spat phlegm into the gutter.

"_That_ for memories," she declared with surprising force. "Nasty, deceptive things they are."

He was tempted for some reason to agree with her, but some contrary impulse spoke up.

"Memories shape who we are."

"Only where you have been," she countered.

"The things we've done, the people we've known, all that is important in our lives is born from memory."

She shook her head forcefully, making her dangling ear-pendants shake and flash sparks in the torchlight.

"You _are_ your memories, young man. You lived them once and they made you who you are. Wherever you go, whomever stands beside you, you carry your memories within you. What is more important, to be caught in a past that has come and gone, or to be able to live in the present and make the most of what you have?"

A thought came to Shido, a ghost of the past, and he realized that he'd fought this battle within himself before, decided whether memory or life, past or present was the proper path. The irony did not escape him; indeed, he relished it.

"You are right, of course," he declared, sweeping a bow over the old woman's hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it. "I cannot waste my todays in an endless search for my yesterdays. Instead, I shall make new memories to replace the old."

She smiled at him, revealing yellowed and broken teeth.

"Then do not let me detain you further, young man, but go and find what makes your Carnival."

The bells of the clock tower chimed nine times.

-X X X-

"This is almost as bad as before," Riho sighed, scrolling through another sequence of pages. "I never realized how many pieces of artwork were connected to crimes or supernatural events!"

"There certainly are a lot of them," Guni agreed.

Riho nodded, making her ponytail bob.

"It's amazing! There are haunted or cursed paintings, sculptures, poems, books, plays, musical instruments, museums, galleries, theaters, and even songs. Murders, suicides, and even non-fatal tragedies are actually common. It's kind of scary the way people act sometimes."

"People are always scary, even without the night breeds. Sometimes, I don't know what Shido sees in them."

"Guni!"

"Hey, you started it. What're you doing now?"

"Well, Mr. Abe mostly collected just paintings, so I'm narrowing the search to that. Though I might be overdoing it, if it's the fact he was a collector that attracted the breed and not anything specific." It was so easy to second-guess herself, she had so little experience in dealing with criminals or breeds. Shido might well be counting on her, and...

_No._ Riho couldn't waste her time like that, or his time. She's lost so much already, her family, her normal life, her hopes of growing up. She wasn't going to lose the only thing that she had left to live for. There would be no more self-doubts, no more second-guessing.

Her gaze skimmed over case-history after case-history, trying to pick out that something, that echo of similarity to the present case. Riho clicked past murders, thefts, and tragedies one after another. One disappearance case caught her eye, but it turned out to be the collector himself who'd vanished and she moved on.

Then she spotted something. It was a copy of a news magazine article from three years ago, archived on the magazine's web site. "Mad Artist's Curse Haunts Masterpiece" was the theatrical title. What caught her attention, neatly highlighted by her search engine, were the repeated references to disappearances. Pietro Montoni, a minor painter in seventeenth-century Venice, had gone mad and committed a series of grisly murders in 1687, the same year in which he painted his masterpiece, _Il Carnival_, his sole work to receive anything resembling critical acclaim. In addition to the killings, he had also been suspected of causing the disappearance of three persons, according to the article. In 1763, a French marquis purchased the painting upon discovering it in a private gallery, and in 1765 was executed for the killing of his wife, his daughter, and three servants. The bodies of the wife and one servant had never been found. The marquis' heir fled the guillotine to England with some of the family's treasures, and sold the painting to a Birmingham mill owner. Two generations later, another tragedy occurred. A further incident took place in 1954. The painting eventually made its way to Japan, as one of the art investments involved in the political funding scandals of the early 1990s..

"Ms. Yayoi, have you ever heard of a painting called _Il Carnival_?" she asked.

"I connection with the case? Let me see." She shuffled through her papers, then ran her fingertip down a list of Abe's holdings.

"_Il Carnival_, 1687, by Pietro Montoni?"

"Yes, that's it! Mr. Abe owned it?"

"He bought it last year from a politician's estate auction. Why?"

Riho read out the key details from the article. She was only halfway through when Yayoi got up, crossed the room, and began looking over her shoulder. Eventually, Riho scrolled the page back up to where an image of the painting was shown. Yayoi grabbed her shoulder.

"This? This is that _Il Carnival_?"

"Yes, I–"

"Come on, Riho; we need to get out to Abe's house. I think you're on to something!"


	4. Chapter 4

Shadows seemed to have crept in from everywhere along the street, swallowing up the revelers in cloaks of darkness. Shido did not, he realized, have any trouble distinguishing individual details, down to the character of faces, but the cloaking shadows instead seemed to leech the color from the figures. A woman with blonde tresses like spun gold, wearing a rich crimson dress that revealed creamy skin at the throat and shoulders, danced out of the light and became at once a creature of shadow, pale-skinned and dark-robed.

Even stranger, to Shido's mind, was that he was still aware of the lost color, knowing somehow that her black-seeming dress was scarlet while the man who bowed over her hand wore a black cloak that was actually green. Not just any green, either, but a rich forest hue, like leaves through which late-afternoon sunlight filtered.

The very oddity of these tricks of the light at first confused Shido, preventing him from realizing the cause of the encroaching darkness, but he soon noticed that the building walls no longer bore the mountings for flambeaux, and thus the street-lamps were the only remaining sources of illumination. The encroaching night made his spirits fall, though it seemed that the revelers did not notice or care, for their gaiety did not slow, but Shido was glad to see the bright gleam of lights ahead and hurried on.

The street opened into a small, circular plaza where two roads met, and a small wooden stage was set up in the center, backed by a large covered wagon such as gypsies or traveling players might use, though there was no horse between the shafts. Torches and lamps blazed all around the stage, ensuring a good view for the gathering spectators.

The show, it seemed, was a kind of Harlequinade, that venerable tradition of the traveling stage. Gaily costumed actors danced on stage, their fancy dress ornamented by large glass jewels that flashed and sparkled in the light. Shido recognized the actors as representing the sprites Harlequin and Columbine, ethereal creatures of magic well-suited to the woodland depicted on the canvas backdrop.

The music began to change, the bright and unfettered melody of the dancers fading. The sprites drifted to stage left as the backdrop itself changed, the woodland receding to reveal a medieval village. Shido realized that the canvas backdrop was actually hung on two spools and so could be wound or unwound left and right as was needed. A deep, bass-driven theme began to play, speaking of hard work and the drudgery of daily living. Another actor made his entrance, dressed as a common laborer. It was an unusual costume choice for a stock character, and it took Shido a few moments to recognize him as Pierrot, more commonly depicted as a clown. Pierrot wore a yoke with buckets, and trudged to and fro with his heavy load.

Then, he wandered towards the left edge of the town–actually walking in place as the background scrolled–and he noticed in the woodlands Columbine, this time alone. He watched her dance for a time, enraptured, until she caught sight of him.. Pierrot shrank back, obviously afraid of this mystical creature, but her beauty and grace charmed him, drawing him on, and they danced together at the border between forest and village. The music swelled with a romantic violin strain that tugged at the heart. Then–

Harlequin's return! At stage left he appeared as if by magic, not in the accusing stance of the jealous lover, but calling to Columbine, beckoning her away. His theme rose, conflicting with that of the lovers. Irresistibly it pulled at Columbine, for she was not meant to be of the mortal world. Yet she would not surrender her love; she clutched at Pierrot's hand and the violin sang. Come with me, she seemed to plead, pulling him towards the wood.

Pierrot's fears returned, though. The wood seemed to threaten, to hold terrors he could not imagine. The world unfettered by walls or routine was too much for him; he ripped free of her and fled pell-mell to stage right. In anguish Columbine was inexorably carried away into her natural element, and all that was left was the village, and the bass theme rising like prison walls as Pierrot once more shouldered his yoke.

The torchlights plunged into darkness. The Harlequinade was over, and Shido hurried on, shaken.

-X X X-

"What a fantastic house!" Riho marveled, turning left and right as she tried to take in all of the atrium. Rain drumming on the skylight above cast weird and twisting shadows across the floor. "It's a little scary, though."

"It scares me, too," Yayoi admitted. "The whole house is like this, an overdone monument to one man's ego."

"No wonder he ended up possessed by a breed. This guy had a few screws loose to begin with." Neither of the two women could find any reason to disagree with Guni.

"_Il Carnival_ is up there," Yayoi pointed to the landing. They went up the stairs and Yayoi took Riho to the painting.

"Is that...blood?" the vampire girl asked with a shudder.

"It's Abe's. He fell against it when he died, according to Shido."

Riho nodded, and reached out toward the canvas. She brushed her fingertips against the bloodstain, almost as a kind of morbid reflex, but as she touched the painting, an electric tingle shot down Riho's arm and the image in the painting _rippled_, like it was a reflection in a lake and a pebble had been tossed in where her finger had touched. She jerked her hand back with a yelp of surprise.

"What is it?"

"Didn't you see it, Ms. Yayoi?"

"See what? You touched the painting."

Confused, she reached out and touched it again, with the same effect.

"I know I'm not imagining it! The picture moved when I touched it!"

"I didn't see a thing," Yayoi said. She touched the painting herself, without apparent effect.

"I didn't see anything happen that time, either," Riho said. "Is it only when I touch it?"

She did so again, but this time she _pushed_, and her hand slid right into the painting, as if it were sliding through a viscous substance, penetrating some kind of membrane. Yayoi gasped in shock.

"Okay," Guni said, "this is getting really weird now."

Riho pulled her hand back out and wiggled her fingers experimentally. Everything seemed to be unhurt and in working order.

"It must be because you're a vampire," Yayoi stated the obvious. "That's close enough to a night breed to be able to use this painting to go...wherever it leads. The breed must be able to take its victims back into it as well. That's how the disappearances happened."

"Then the breed...is in the painting?"

"Right. It must live in there, then come out to possess the painting's owners when they're susceptible to it."

"Shido must have figured it out and gone in after the breed," Guni declared, but both Riho and Yayoi shook their heads.

"I don't think so, Guni."

"Mr. Shido wouldn't do that, not without at least letting us know what he was doing. He'd want us to be able to help–or at least to destroy the painting if he...if he didn't..."

"Yeah," Guni spared her from having to finish the thought, "you're right. Shido isn't careless like that when it comes to fighting the night breeds."

"So if he is in there, he didn't go on purpose."

"Mr. Shido has to be in there. It's too big a coincidence for him not to be. Things just don't happen like that," Riho declared.

Guni flitted over and touched the painting experimentally. Like Yayoi, she apparently wasn't able to make it work.

"So what does that mean?"

"It means that somehow, that breed took Mr. Shido into the painting and has kept him there all day."

"Are you planning on going in after him, Riho? You don't know what you'll find–and I do mean what _you'll_ find, since it looks like Guni and I can't do anything to help you."

"You would if you could! You're not abandoning me, Ms. Yayoi!"

"That isn't what I meant, though it's nice of you to think of it. I just wanted you to realize that, whatever is out there, you'll be alone in facing it."

Riho sighed, and even gave a wry little smile that surprised her.

"I'm always alone, Ms. Yayoi, except for Mr. Shido, and even he..." She looked down at her hands, so pale and white. Riho remembered when her complexion had been a rosy pink with youthful health, and now...

"Shido doesn't have any memories of his human life," Yayoi murmured, understanding.

"He's been a vampire for centuries. He understands what it means to be a night walker. I..." She couldn't finish the thought. "Maybe," she said instead, "for once it'll turn out to be a good thing, that I'm a vampire. If it lets me help Mr. Shido..."

Riho reached out and touched the painting again, pressing the flat of her hand against it. Again, the tingling passed down her arm, and the canvas rippled. Gathering her determination, like a swimmer faced with a cold lake, she hurled herself forward, feeling the membrane between _here_ and _there_ part, tugging at her face and body. Then she was through, and the darkness closed in around her.

-X X X-

Ten times the clock tower's bell tolled, ten times it rang for joys and sorrows. Ten times for glory and ten times for passion. These thoughts came unbidden to Shido's mind but were irresistible, unable to be turned away. The bells shouted them forth as boldly and brazenly as if they'd used words.

Shido was getting near, now. The city was huge, but the tower reared up above him now, as tall as if one could stand atop its peak and touch the moon. Only another block or two and he would be there at its foot. He wondered from whence it sprang–a cathedral, a palace?–and what it would mean to him when he reached it. Would he find the object of his search, or indeed, its purpose? Or would it be only what it was, a grand edifice of stone and metal given life by a nameless architect's imagination?

It seemed that he was not alone, Shido noted, in seeking the clock tower, for there was a flow in the crowd, a steady tide that seemed to press in that direction. It was almost a current of sorts, and Shido's own progress was not unlike a boat sailing with the flow of a river, for he moved with the crowd but also strode through them at a fast clip. They, he realized, while they were moving in the same direction were also still caught up in their Carnival revels, while Shido did nothing but advance steadily.

It seemed like no time at all before the street opened up again, this time into a great square which must have been the central plaza of the city. To the left and right were rows of shops, broken up by exiting avenues, but the entire far side was made up of one single building, a massive palace. It was a grand, cathedral-like structure; there was nothing of the fortress about it, what with a profusion of arched windows and ornamented and sculpted walls. This was not a castle meant for war or to imprison, but a showpiece, a monument to the glory of the city's rulers. Shido might have mistaken it for a church, but there was nothing of the sacred about it, no message to be found, but only the brazen grandeur of those who were successful in the here and now and left the hereafter to others more suited for it.

Predictably, the clock tower reared high above the palace, framed by a profusion of lesser spires. Its great face glowed with an inner light, a plume of smoke rising to indicate that this was no trick but a specially designed flame-chamber to illuminate the clock.

The palace's great doors had been thrown open, and a throng passed in and out, men and women caught up in the call of Carnival pleasures. The rich and poor alike were there; clearly the palace-keeper made no distinction between the classes, at least not now, not at the height of Carnival.

Shido did not know if this was what he had been beckoned towards, but nonetheless he unerringly set his course towards the door and let himself be carried within.


	5. Chapter 5

Riho found herself outside, on a city street beneath the night sky. The sudden transition left her momentarily shaken; had she not expected, if not this exactly, then at least _something_, she would never have been able to deal with it. As it was, she found the experience bewildering; she knew she was wherever Montoni's painting led, but the sheer reality of the place amazed her. The air was warm and heavy, a spring night in a sunnier climate than anyplace she knew, and the cobblestones beneath her feet had that not-quite-level feel that spoke of great antiquity, of centuries of use by feet and wheels and of the forces of nature.

She appeared to be in a great city of some kind; the street she was on was long and lined with closely-built buildings of historical European style, though Riho could not place the exact period or nation–if there was one. Painters created fancy as well as fact, and Riho did recognize, if not the specific street, the general outlines of what had been depicted in the painting. There, though, there had been light and people and gaiety, while here everything was dark and silent. There was no torch, no street-lamp to light the way, no press of people caught in the wildness, the loss of control that was Carnival-time. All was still and dark, silent but for Riho's footsteps as she turned to look about her.

_It's lucky vampires can see in the dark!_ she thought with some relief, for she would have no trouble making it through the city. The thought of a bloodsucking bat flying through the night and running into walls because it couldn't see rose in her mind, but she set it aside. The humorous image was probably the result of rising hysteria, Riho's own nerves being drawn to the breaking point by her fears for Shido and the strange situation she had ended up in.

Those fears surged up brightly as she saw, perhaps a block away, a crumpled figure lying on the curbside. She ran towards it at once, her heart in her throat. Was it Shido?

No. She sighed heavily with relief. It wasn't Shido. It wasn't a person at all, but a life-sized mannequin of some kind, its face a blank white eggshell. It was dressed in a fancy red and blue tunic with gold edging as well as red pantaloons tucked into black knee boots ornamented with gold thread. It looked like something out of a movie, like the mannequin had been stolen from a costume shop and dumped in the street. The clothes kind of matched the architecture, Riho thought. Next to its pale white hand lay a full-face mask with no ties but instead mounted on a stick for its wearer to hold. The fingers were actually curled slightly around it, and she realized they were articulated. It wasn't a mannequin, then, but a life-size doll.

Suddenly, with a jerk, the doll sat upright, its upper body snapping up as if pulled by something. Riho yelped in fear as she leapt back. Was this the breed? It looked nothing like Shido had described, but that could be because it wasn't inhabiting a host. She'd never faced a night breed alone before. Did she even have a chance?

The doll continued to move; it was pulled to its feet and then began to walk towards Riho. Its movements were jerky and uncoordinated, not smooth at all, but it was not slow, either. It lashed out at her with its hand, and the hard, sharp fingertips slashed through her sleeve and cut her arm. It was only a superficial injury and healed over at once, but it brought sharply home to Riho that she was being attacked. She backpedaled, instinctively glancing left and right, then realizing that there was no help coming, no last-second rescue.

She would have to do this herself.

The doll lurched towards her, limbs and joints clacking with every movement. Riho tried to drive the sound from her mind, keep her concentration on what she was doing. Shido had been teaching her how to fight as a vampire, but she'd never actually tried it in combat before. She raised her right hand to her lips and pierced her fingertip with her fangs.

_To a vampire, blood is life, Riho,_ she remembered him saying, _but it is so much more besides. Blood is power, and your strength resides in even a single drop of it._

Riho concentrated only on the voice in her memory as her finger bled, striving to shut out her fear of the thing advancing on her, her fear of what might have become of Shido, her terror of spending the endless nights before her alone. What mattered was the blood, _her_ blood, _her_ power. She called to it, and it responded, swelling and extending, hardening into a blade of faceted ruby. Riho's hand closed around the bloodsword's hilt, and yet she could feel along its entire length, for it was part of her, not a weapon to be picked up and put down but wholly a creation of her own power as a vampire. Her face lit up in a smile as she saw what she'd been able to do, and then the smile vanished as she turned towards the advancing doll.

It lunged for her again, clawing at her with its fingertips, but this time she was ready for it. Riho dodged aside easily with her vampiric speed, and swung the bloodsword in a horizontal arc at the doll's unprotected abdomen, under its extended arm. The sword struck hard; there was a sound of splintering wood and Riho could feel power surging through her, out of the blade and into the target. She completed the scything stroke and the living doll fell apart in two halves.

_That can't have been the breed,_ she thought. _I couldn't have beaten it so easily._

Then the smell hit her, potent and irresistible. _Blood._ Not the sword, but fresh human blood that made her throat ache with sudden hunger. Riho's head turned, almost involuntarily following the scent, and she found herself looking down at the doll. Blood was flowing from the severed halves, pooling on the cobblestones. For a horrible moment she was afraid she'd just killed a person in a costume, until she realized that the exposed parts didn't show anything but splintered wood.

Only the did she scream.

"H-how can a doll bleed?" she babbled aloud.

It had been a doll, and yet it hadn't. It had been one of the people who'd disappeared. _This_ was what had become of them.

The rattling of wooden limbs and metal joints heralded that arrival of more of the living dolls. They lurched from doorways and alleys, dressed in a variety of outlandish costumes, some male, some female, and some of strange creatures from which Riho couldn't identify the sex of the wearer. The dolls themselves were faceless and sexless, each and every one identical but for their outfits. Most were empty-handed, but a few carried some kind of weapon appropriate for their costume–a court dandy with a dueling sword, a juggler with a bandolier of daggers, a medieval headsman with a cruelly carved axe. It was like an insane masquerade, crazily costumed dolls thronging the streets and every one advanced on Riho with that same jerky, unnatural way of moving.

-X X X-

The great hall of the palace was set for feasting. Long wooden tables groaned under the weight of succulent viands, platters of roasted meats, delectable fruits, fresh-baked breads and superbly aged cheeses. The light from hundreds of candles from the great chandeliers above were reflected dazzlingly off polished silver cutlery and off ewers and goblets containing rare vintages mulled and spiced. The costumed guests ate and drank heartily, with a clattering of knives and forks, consuming food with a sort of heedless gusto.

This bounty attracted Shido not at all, magnificent though it was and despite the fact he hadn't eaten or drank anything since he'd awakened in the inn. Indeed, the thought of putting food between his lips faintly repulsed him. The strains of music flowing down from the small orchestra in the musicians' gallery overlooking the hall was far more appealing.

He walked on towards the far end of the banquet hall. There, on a kind of raised dais, sat a table crossways to the others, so those at it could overlook the diners. It could have easily seated two dozen along one side, but in fact there was only one person there; the other baroquely carved, velvet-upholstered chairs were empty. The table's single occupant was a woman, wearing an elaborate gown, a fantastic confection of gold and ivory satin. Her face was strikingly beautiful, with glorious honey-colored hair tumbling down over bare shoulders and swanlike neck. Her eyes were wide and so bright a gray they nearly seemed silver. Her lips curved in a welcoming smile as Shido approached her. Beneath the table he saw two long, lean shapes like dogs; they stirred as he neared but neither they nor any of the people present made any kind of move to stop him from approaching the dais.

"Welcome, seeker," the woman told him.

Far above, the tower bells tolled eleven.

-X X X-

_Marionettes!_ Riho realized. That's what the unnatural movements of the dolls reminded her of. They were just like the figures in puppet shows she'd seen as a child, limbs and bodies suspended by wires and pulled into uncannily complex motions by the puppetmaster's art.

She parried a sword-slash with the bloodsword and the marionette's blade was severed by her supernatural weapon. It dropped the hilt with the remaining stub and instead lunged with empty hands. Riho backed away, her ripped dress testimony to the clawed fingertips' ability to wound, but she couldn't bring herself to strike out. Whatever evil magic afflicted it, this was still, somehow, a person–a victim, not a willing servant of darkness like Yukito Abe.

That wouldn't stop the marionette from hurting _her_, though.

Maybe there was another way, she thought. She let the bloodsword become just blood again, and rushed the marionette. Riho evaded its attacks and seized its shirt, easily lifting the doll over her head. Her vampiric strength amazed her; before the change she'd have barely been able to lift the marionette, and now it seemed no heavier than a feather. Riho hurled the doll bodily into a cluster of others and they went down with a loud clatter of wood, tangled together. In more than one place, though, a limb had been cracked or chipped from striking the cobblestones, and blood was once again welling up from those injuries.

That was the hard, ugly truth of it. There was no way Riho could fight back without injuring, perhaps killing these victims of the painting's breed. Even if she was willing to do that, they might still overwhelm her by sheer weight of numbers or because of her very limited experience in any kind of fighting. Running away wasn't an option; the marionettes were everywhere.

_No_, she realized, _they're not._ She was thinking like a human, and indeed the steadily advancing dolls would have had a human trapped and surrounded, but Riho wasn't human anymore. She had to fight–or escape–not as an ordinary person, but as a vampire.

She sprang up from the cobblestones, leaping two stories straight up to the steeply gabled roof of one of the buildings lining the street. Riho easily kept her footing on the slippery surface; not only were her balance and dexterity superhuman but she could also move in ways simply impossible for the living, like running straight down a vertical wall.

Yes, she'd lost a great deal, but sometimes what she'd gained was worth it, even to a girl who really didn't care about power or magic.

Her strategy had worked, too; the dolls were milling around at the base of the house where she perched, but even though they clearly know where she was they had no way to get easily up to her.

Riho couldn't just hide there forever, though. One of the marionettes had discovered the drainpipe and was beginning to climb up it. Soon it would be on the roof with her and she'd have the same problem as before. _If only_, she thought, _there was a way to cut its strings._ Did the ghostly puppets even have strings? They should, Riho told herself. There had to be a reason they took this form, wasn't there?

And there they were, pale blue threads that reached down from the night sky in a forest of strings connected to each and every marionette, far more than even a master puppeteer could use. Sometimes the strings passed right through solid objects such as overhanging street signs or the roofs of houses, making Riho understand that they had no physical reality at all, that the "strings" were merely extensions of the controller's power. She hadn't seen them at first because she hadn't been looking, not really. The golden, vertically-pupiled eyes of a vampire could see more than just what could be touched or felt–if she remembered to look with them.

As the marionette's hand cleared the top of the wall and scrabbled for a hold, Riho summoned up the bloodsword again and swung it in a sweeping arc above the doll. At the touch of her weapon the strands of blue light parted and vanished, and the animation went out of the marionette. It began to fall at once, slipping over the edge now that it had no way to hold itself up, but Riho caught it by the arm and hauled it up over the edge, leaving it braced against the edge of the drain so it wouldn't fall. She'd finally found a way to overcome the dolls without actually destroying whatever life was inside.

That didn't solve her problem, though. There was no way Riho could cut free _all_ of the marionettes, and even if she somehow did, how long would it last? Could the puppetmaster regain its control of them? She was so new to these supernatural occurrences that she couldn't even guess what was and wasn't possible.

No, she needed to run away. The marionettes couldn't catch her if she didn't let them. From her vantage point on the high roof, Riho could see out over the city, and from this view she could tell there was somewhere to escape _to_, or at least where she ought to go. While most of the city was dark and still, one portion was not. The glow of lanterns and torches suffused it, and behind windows Riho could see flickers of movement. At the center of the glow was a great fairytale palace with rearing spires, a clock tower looming above them all. Swiftly, she sprang from roof to roof with an effortless agility, landing lightly on peak or shingles and leaping off again. The warm night air rushed against her face as she moved so quickly she was almost flying.

The clock tolled eleven times, as if its chimes were to welcome her to the palace.


	6. Chapter 6

"Come," the lady said, "sit and tarry with me a while, traveler, for it had been long since any of your ilk have been seen beneath my roof, and I would not be thought an ill hostess."

"Thank you," Shido replied. She extended her hand and he bowed low over it. "But how may I address you?" he asked, finding himself matching the formality and courtliness of her speech almost instinctively. "I fear that I have come all this way as if beckoned by a dream, and having arrived I know not where I have come."

She gestured to a seat beside herself.

"This is by no means an unexpected circumstance, good sir. Join me, and I shall seek to ease your mind."

There was no refusing her gentle command; Shido circled the table and sat down beside her. The velvet cushions were luxurious, comfortably cradling his body. Beneath them, the feast went on, the costumed revelers heartily eating and drinking.

"You are a most generous hostess, milady, to so share your bounty with your people, low and great alike," Shido ventured.

She smiled in return, and he reflected that, other than the innkeeper, she was the first person he had met in this city who was fully unmasked, without even a delicate domino on a stick to be held coquettishly before her eyes.

Beneath her table the beasts shifted, as if they scented Shido's presence and were unsure what the proper response should be.

"There is nothing I savor so much," his hostess told him, "as life, and the rich living of it. That is why Carnival-time is my favorite. Everyone abandons all pretense and, donning a mask, seeks to indulge fully all the desires that during the rest of the year are kept trapped inside by reticence, propriety, and fear. A life lost might be sad, but a life _wasted_, left unlived, is a tragedy beyond measure. For why are humans born, if not to live? Why do we exist," she cried passionately, "if not for the sake of life?"

"Your subjects seem to agree with you," Shido told her, thinking of what he'd seen and heard in the city. "You've managed to bring your love of Carnival to them."

She smiled at him.

"You are kind."

The hounds slipped from beneath the table, snuffling the air. They ignored Shido entirely, their movements smooth and flowing as they descended the dais and passed out through the hall.

"But what is wrong, milady?" he asked. "Although you smile at me, I can see sorrow in your eyes."

"Sir, I–"

"Please, if I touch on private matters that are none of my concern, then I apologize, but I could not help but notice that despite your obvious pleasure in the Carnival revels, you are troubled." The antique phrasing came easily and naturally to him; Shido would have felt any other mode of speech to be crude and inappropriate for the setting.

The lady's face turned faintly wistful, as if by Shido's speaking of her feelings she could set them free.

"I..."

She glanced aside, blushing.

"You will think me a fool."

"Never that," Shido answered her.

"I am surrounded by gaiety," she said, "but I never take part myself. I do not only want to help others to live to the fullest. I am not so selfless as that! I want my own dreams, my own passions!"

She looked up into Shido's eyes, her own wide and yearning. A strand of hair had escaped and dangled down her cheek; she brushed it back but as she did so, her fingers lightly skimmed along the side of her neck. The gesture riveted him; he could not look away, somehow. The soft skin, the long, sleek curve, the faint pulse in her throat. Again Shido felt himself assailed by memories, one crowding upon another, but there was more to it. Something was awakening within him, changing him. He felt a mask falling away, not the one on his face but something more profound. The force of a terrible hunger seemed to be coming forth, as yet nameless desires but ones Shido could feel, that would soon have their way with him, will he or nil he.

The golden lady smiled up at him, but he did not see the terrible yearning in her eyes, for he could not take his gaze away from her sleek, white throat.

-X X X-

Riho sprinted from rooftop to rooftop, her steps quick and sure on the steep sloped and slippery tiles. Lightly, she sprang from peak to peak without apparent effort. From the streets below, and occasionally trying to climb up to meet her, came the rattle and clatter of marionette limbs, but the creatures had no chance against her. Only by swarming her with numbers did they have any chance at beating the vampire, and Riho was moving too fast and staying too far out of their reach for them to have any hope of that.

In very little time, she had reached the edge of the golden glow. There, everything changed. For a distance of two or three blocks around the palace, the city had come alive. Instead of dead silence, there was music and laughter, and instead of weird marionettes, there were people. Lamps and torches blazed, and a frenzy of merriment seemed to grip the crowd. It was as if Riho had walked into an entirely different world. The lit area, though, seemed to be growing smaller, the lamps and torches at its fringe steadily if slowly going out one by one, and at least part of the riddle explained itself.

Riho was perched on a roof just over a street-lamp set with royal blue glass. Beneath it, a costumed young couple embraced one another with hungry kisses, making her want to look away. In the next instant, though, the lamp's flame guttered out and the shadows ate another twenty or thirty feet of the city. As the darkness fell, so did the couple; what had in the light been a rakishly handsome young man and a slightly plump, curvaceous girl became two more faceless, featureless marionettes, which Riho could only tell apart by their clothing.

She wanted to scream, and choked it off only at the last moment. There was no time to be horror-stricken and give way to fear, as much as the plight of these people frightened her. She had to find Shido, before he, too, fell victim to the same fate.

If he hadn't already.

_No!_

Riho hadn't noticed the two dark shapes that detached themselves from the palace and leapt to the nearest rooftop, but when she turned back from the street to continue the journey she saw them bounding towards her quickly enough. They were long and low, running on four legs like hounds, but they were by no means dogs, as she saw when they were only a few houses away. At least, not unless there was a dog with a body six feet long, black and brushed with scales, with hips and hind legs shaped like a great cat's, with foreclaws that were long and spread nearly like hands, with a narrow ribbon of forked pink tongue and three eyes that burned a pale lavender.

These weren't more toys or puppets. These were night breeds. Riho had never tried to fight one-on-one before against a breed, let alone two at once.

"I wish Mr. Shido was here!" she whispered fearfully, but then there was no more time for talk, Riho bit her finger and sprayed the blood-droplets at the nearer breed. The drops swelled into missiles, bursting against the roof and in a couple of occasions striking against the monster's body.

The second breed, though, was almost upon Riho even as she summoned up the bloodsword again. It swept at her with a foreclaw, and she was just able to dodge back far enough for it to miss–except at the last moment, its inch-long talons snapped out into eight-inch blades that sliced four vertical swipes down her chest through her dress and cutting into the flesh beneath. She screamed in pain and lashed down with the bloodsword in a reflexive attempt to fend the breed off. The blow connected solidly with its side and knocked the night breed tumbling back, right off the roof.

Riho's wounds burned, reminding her of an earlier injury, of the pain from a similar slice from a similar claw. She'd been cut open, left to bleed out, forcing her to choose between death and asking Shido to bring her into unlife. How eager she'd been then to rush into eternity, without any concept of what it really meant.

_You could make up for it,_ a traitorous little voice whispered to her. _You could let the breed kill you. Then there would be no pain, no heartache, no loss, only peace._

But she didn't want to _die_, she thought as the first breed attacked her and she parried desperately with the bloodsword. That hadn't been the decision she'd regretted. She'd had the chance to walk away from all this, from Shido and night breeds and vampirism. He'd _warned_ her that staying with him would eventually lead her off the decent path. But she'd stayed by his side, because nothing was more important to her than being with him. She'd even dreamed of one day making the change, of being with Shido forever, a literal happily _ever after_. That was where reality fell apart for her and left her with only the cold ashes of her hopes.

Did Shido even know what she'd given up? Did he know she'd given it up _for him_?

"You are _not_ going to take him from me!" she screamed defiantly at the night breed, blocking its next assault.

It was easier said than done, though. Riho's youth as a vampire didn't just count against her in terms of power, but because Shido had centuries of experience fighting breeds while she had virtually none. Her brain wasn't used to reacting with all the supernatural speed her body could manage. When the breed's tongue wrapped around her leg, Riho didn't realize she could use the bloodsword to cut free until it had already flipped her through the air to crash on her back on the roof, breaking shingles and raising a cloud of dust. It then pounced, spearing at her with all four of its clawed paws. Riho only managed to roll aside at the last second, feeling the slight tug as a claw plucked at her hair ribbon.

When the second breed reappeared on the roof, the rent in its side hissing forth lavender steam, she knew it was time to run. If she couldn't find Shido to help her, the odds of her winning the fight weren't good.

She pivoted and sprang, just ahead of the breed's attack. As she landed and leapt again, another tongue-lash just missed her ankle. It seemed like she covered the last couple of city blocks in seconds. At last she reached the central plaza and had made the last jump–only to realize that she stood no chance at all of clearing the broad open space before her. The fall probably wouldn't do much damage, but she would end up precisely in the middle of a seething, clattering mass of marionettes. Even if they didn't finish her, she'd certainly be left open for the breeds to finish the job.

In desperation, Riho bit down on her finger and called on her blood again, this time transforming it into a long, thin coil, a whip which she hurled at the palace. The bloodwhip lashed around a cornice, coming to full extension, and instead of falling she began to swing. Riho pulled herself up on the whip hand over hand, shortening the arc so that she soared over the dolls' clutching hands. She landed lightly on a second-floor window ledge, outside a fanciful latticework of steel and glass. _Safe_–for the moment. The breeds were still in pursuit, though, so she smashed through the window and sprang inside.

Even here, inside towering halls with mosaiced tile floors, the darkness was encroaching, candles guttering out one by one. Riho ran down the hall, following the vanishing light towards what she felt must be the core of this strange world within the painting. She rounded two turns, then burst out onto a landing overlooking a great feast hall. Lights around the chamber were going out as well, so that at the far end of the long banquet tables shadows were consuming people, and marionettes collapsed next to people who continued to carouse without apparent notice–or care–of what was beside them.

And at the head table...

"Mr. Shido!" Riho gasped aloud. He was wearing a small mask over his eyes and outlandish clothing better suited to eighteenth-century Europe, but it was unmistakably him. He was bending over an extraordinarily beautiful woman who wore a dress fit for a queen. Her head arched back, baring her neck.

From far above, the clock tower began to chime, its deep peals announcing the coming of midnight.

Shido's lips met the woman's throat, and his jaw flexed as he bit down. A trickle of blood flowed from the corner of his mouth, sliding down along the woman's collarbone and into her bodice. Her hand rose up, cupping the back of his head, her eyelids fluttering as her lips parted in an ecstatic sigh.

The bells pealed on.

_"SHIDO!"_


	7. Chapter 7

_"SHIDO!"_

It cut through him like a silver blade against his soul. He jerked upright as something inside him seemed to shatter. The sweet copper taste of blood was on his tongue, in his mouth along with something...else. He staggered back, letting the woman he held slip from his arms. Her body dropped limply, struck the edge of her seat, and crumpled to the floor. Lines of fire seemed to twist along the veins in his chest as he looked up.

"Riho?"

Seeing her there on the landing, unkempt and bloodied, finished what her voice had begun. He knew who he was, _what_ he was, and what he'd been doing. He'd been entranced, but no more.

"Mr. Shido!" she called back, her face lighting up happily. Maybe she, too, could tell that he had returned to his senses.

Just in time, too, from the feel of it. He remembered what he'd done, and what he'd drawn from the woman besides blood, what was fighting to remain within him. With his mind no longer fogged, he spat it forth, a sickly green mist that issued from his mouth and pooled into a seething mass.

"Noooo!" a voice keened as the last of the lights went out. "You cannot do this!"

Shido ripped the mask from his face. No more stupid games. He'd had more than enough of illusion and masquerades.

"It's over," he told the night breed, even as it rose up into a column, rows of flailing tendrils down each side. "You won't use me to carry you out of this place."

Riho leapt from the railing and landed next to him; he was relieved to see that though she was injured, the wounds were superficial and she would heal easily if she fed.

"Mr. Shido, what's going on?" she asked. "Are you...all right?"

"I am now, thanks to you. This breed had me under its spell. I suppose that I wanted so badly to catch the breed that possessed Abe that I sent my own mind out, calling, and _this_ breed–the other one's master–met me halfway. I came here, entered the painting, and found myself in another dream altogether."

"So you're the puppetmaster!" Riho exclaimed.

"Yesss," hissed the breed's unnatural voice. It flowed to the nearest marionette and merged with the doll, which rose to its feet as a burly, brown-bearded man dressed as Robin Hood. "That madman Montoni," it continued in a rich bass, "trapped me here. I gave him the genius his art had always lacked, but he reneged on our deal. I was to experience the blessed light, but instead he locked me away, in the painting my power had given him!"

"So you made this place into your own little kingdom?" Shido challenged. "Who are these people?" He pointed to the scattered marionettes. "A moment ago they were celebrating, feasting. How did you turn them into this?"

The breed threw back his head and laughed.

"I may not be able to leave here, but my hounds can. When they find an acceptable host, I let them out, but in return for their freedom they bring people back for me."

"The disappearances in the painting's history!" Riho exclaimed. "Then these _are_ really the victims!"

Shido glanced at her in surprise. It seemed that things had been happening in his absence. Riho and Yayoi had obviously learned much more about the painting and how it was connected to Abe's crimes.

Then again, that had been obvious anyway. She was _here_, after all.

"Some are, yes. Others are like Shido, men and women who came in close contact with _Il Carnival_ with yearnings in their heart. I could reach them, call out to them, just as I did to you."

"And they became your toys," Shido spat back, sickened by his understanding," given life only when you will it, otherwise trapped in these shells and manipulated by your whims."

"Of course! They are held in darkness, not knowing if it will be weeks, months, even days before I grant them life again. When I give them their lives back, they are desperate for the chance to live, and so they plunge into life's sensations in a way they were far too afraid to when they were out in the world."

Shido followed it all too well. The night breed had been telling him the truth in its guise as the golden lady when it had told him about the meaning of Carnival-time and the revelers of the city. It did crave the joys of life, and forced its puppets to live vicariously for its whims.

Just as truthfully, it wanted to experience those joys for itself. Like so many of the night breeds, it was drawn to life in the light, even if the cost was the blood of innocents.

"They lead tortured lives, unable to escape, just to ease your boredom and frustration?" he accused.

"And when you don't give them life, they become your puppets instead?" Riho added. "Dolls to move around however you want, even if it gets them hurt or killed?"

"What of it? Who cares if a doll breaks? That's all they are–my marionettes to perform their show at my whim."

"But what did you want with Mr. Shido?"

"It wanted what all breeds want," Shido told her, "to escape its prison. It has dozens of hosts to choose from, but there is no day in this painting, no hours of light."

"Of course!" Riho exclaimed. "I was able to enter the painting, and the breeds it calls the hounds could come and go, but humans can't enter or leave on their own!"

"Exactly. It couldn't leave by possessing a host, but I could carry it out within me." A vampire couldn't be possessed by a breed, but it could draw one out of a possessed body by drinking the host's blood. It had gotten Shido to do exactly that, and had his mind stayed fogged, he would have brought it back out of the painting with him, and then...Who knew?

"I commend your acuteness," the breed said, giving him a courtly bow. "Such was in fact my intention in bringing you to me. Indeed, that still _is_ my intention."

"That will never happen."

"Oh, but it will. I may not be able to leave here myself, but I am master of this world, such as it is. Only with my permission can even you leave here, and I do not feel inclined to give it without some manner of benefit to myself."

Shido bit his finger, calling forth the bloodsword.

"I won't let another murdering night breed loose on the world!"

The breed only laughed, its host giving it deep, booming tones.

"So, you think to use force to persuade me to give up? Your little friend already knows how well that will go." Its smile broadened. "But why not? It will be an object lesson to you of your true position. After all, I have a spare."

It snapped its fingers, and the "hounds" returned, slipping into the hall through the main door, claws clicking on the tile floor. Riho's battle had not been all one-sided by the look of it; one breed's scaled side bore a nasty gouge where its unnatural form seemed to be scarring over. The triple lavender eyes burned balefully, and Shido wondered which of them had been the one to possess Yukito Abe. In the next instant, they launched themselves at the vampires and Shido moved to intercept one, only to find himself blocked by the puppetmaster, which parried his sword-strokes with a hand surrounded in a pulsing green aura.

"Come now, Shido, let us not be so cruel as to deny the children their fun," it said laughingly, then struck him in the chest with its other hand. The blow sent him sprawling, sliding back along the floor until he hit the steps to the dais. The breed beckoned mockingly to him.

"Come now, vampire; let us test ourselves more than that. I haven't had the pleasure of genuinely doing battle in centuries. The least you can do is to make it interesting."

Shido pushed himself back to his feet, and just in time, for the breed was all but on him again, pressing the attack despite the "I'm waiting" nature of its taunts. Shido parried the creature's hands and kicked it back a few steps. The exchange lightened his heart, though. The breed, for all its arrogance, had tried to use strategy against him, a deception rather than pure brute force.

It was being cautious. It feared that it might lose.

Shido began to hope that he might win.

He risked a glance aside, and saw that Riho was hard-pressed by the two breeds but holding her own. She was in almost constant motion, diving and dodging out of the way of the two opponents. Having fought one before while it possessed Abe, Shido knew the "hounds" were not particularly powerful breeds, but he was still proud of Riho for being able to confront two at once despite her inexperience. Still, the risk to her was great. One mistake could leave her seriously injured, and eventually even weak breeds would wear her down.

"I'm your opponent, Shido!" the breed taunted, again getting past his guard to deliver a blow to his lower abdomen. Shido grunted in pain and sprang back a dozen feet to the top of the head table to avoid the follow-up strike aimed for his throat. Without releasing the sword, he raked his teeth against his left hand and hurled a spray of bloodmissiles not at the puppetmaster but at one of the hounds. The breed was taken completely by surprise, struck multiple times, and Riho took immediate advantage. With a killer instinct he had never imagined she possessed, she plunged the point of her sword down through the wounded breed's forehead. It died, dissolving into a cloud of stinking black smoke.

Shido suddenly found himself hurtling forward; two marionettes had risen up, grabbed the table at each end, and flipped in over, dislodging him. He did not hit the floor, though, for the puppetmaster was already there, striking him a tremendous blow in the chest that smashed Shido back through the fallen table.

"If you care so much for your little friend that you can't be bothered to pay attention to your own battle," it taunted, "then maybe I should just rip your heart out of your chest and let _her_ bring me out of here."

"You won't lay a hand on her!" Shido roared and leapt back on the attack.

"Ah, touched a nerve, have I?" the puppetmaster said, fending him off with some difficulty. "Have I finally made you serious about this fight?"

It swatted Shido's blade aside and launched a counterstrike, but the vampire pivoted away, spinning completely around to dodge the breed's lethal attack and came out of the spin into a lunging thrust that impaled the bloodsword through the breed's chest. It howled once, a completely inhuman sound, and then the green aura seemed to fade from what became merely a broken marionette. It flowed to another of the crumpled dolls, which in the next instant sprang to its feet, a young woman Riho's age with jet-black hair and a red-and-blue gypsy costume. The puppetmaster's laugh was a girlish giggle.

"Not bad, vampire," it said. "You defeated me quite nicely, and took only a few minor injuries in return." It favored him with a thoughtful pout. "Do you think that you can do it a dozen more times? Two dozen? Two _hundred_?"

Shido understood what it meant. The puppetmaster had an effectively limitless supply of new hosts to inhabit. If Shido defeated one, it would simply leap to another, and spring up as good as new, whereas Shido would feel the effects of each fight mounting up, until at last he would be beaten.

"Perhaps I'll show you a new trick or two this time?" the puppetmaster said conversationally, and picked up a plate from the table where its new host had been sitting. The china burst into the same green fire as its hands and the breed hurled it discus-style at Shido. He dodged aside easily and heard it detonate behind him.

He'd been wrong. It wasn't strategy at all, but games–the amusements of a cruel creature suffering from boredom and frustration. It had all the advantages in this, its own little world, and it had no intention of risking death, although it apparently had no qualms about letting its minions fall to eternal darkness. Shido couldn't defeat it over and over until it ran out of bodies, and he certainly couldn't count on any help from the hosts' own minds, which the breed had long since conquered. Nor would it fight him in its natural shape, where it would be at risk.

_Maybe there's another way, though._

Shido summoned up the bloodwhip, letting the sword drop. This weapon was not as useful defensively, and he was given a few bad moments by the night breed until he could take the opportunity to lash out and coil the whip around the puppetmaster's body. He then called upon the power of his blood, and an aura of blue flame engulfed the breed.

"Foolish vampire! You can't purge me from this body; its soul has been mine for generations."

"I'm not trying to cast you out," Shido said, gritting his teeth with the effort it took to hold the breed fast. "Riho!" he shouted.

Shido could feel the puppetmaster's power pushing against his own. It would break free in seconds, too short a time for him even to explain his plan. He'd hoped for more time, a chance to tell her what to do now, once the breed was already trapped.

He didn't need to worry, though, because she figured it out at once. Riho sprang for the breed, and with a titanic swing of her bloodsword, severed the gypsy girl's head while Shido held the puppetmaster trapped within the shell of its latest puppet.

The head bounced once.

Twice.

Shido left the whip go.

And the world fell apart.

-X X X-

"Shido! Riho! You made it!" Yayoi exclaimed. They'd hit the floor hard, appearing out of thin air as the painting burned to ash in a pale blue flame.

"Geez, Riho, you look like hell," Guni commented as Shido helped her to her feet. Her hair had been torn out of its bow, tumbling down over her shoulders, and her dress was a shredded, bloodstained ruin.

"She destroyed a breed by herself," Shido said, "and she helped me defeat two more, including the painting's master. She saved me." The light in her golden eyes wasn't just the unearthly glow of vampirism; his praise clearly meant more than he could imagine to her.

Riho was barely able to stand without leaning on him, but she still asked, "What about all the people? Why aren't they here, too?"

He shook his head sadly.

"I'm sorry. There was nothing we could do for them."

"But why?"

"They were already lost. Whatever life they had was only because of the breed's power. All we can do now is hope that their souls found peace."

She took a moment to absorb his explanation, then nodded firmly.

"You're right, Mr. Shido. To be trapped eternally like that, only given life to amuse a monster, and only often enough that they were eternally hungry for it..." He felt the shudder that ran through her. "They were trapped in the darkness just like the breeds were. I just wish there had been a way to help."

"I know."

He gently stroked her hair.

"I can see there's going to be a lot to this story," Yayoi said briskly in an obvious attempt to break the suddenly grim mood.

"_I_ can see that Riho's going to be impossible to live with for the next month," Guni chimed in. "The secretary saves the boss's life! It's like a bad TV movie!" The words lacked any of her usual bite, though; it was obvious she was as elated as any of them by the safe return.

"Well, although I usually try to play hard-to-get, I think that the conquering heroine needs a bite to eat before we go any further." Yayoi fumbled at her collar.

"Thank you, Ms. Yayoi."

"Don't thank me. Just make sure Shido doesn't throw out those tights!"

Guni cracked up laughing and the two vampires blushed. Friends could always get under one's skin. But then again, Shido thought, looking at the three women who in one way or another shared his life, that was the point. The fact that things in his life didn't always go his way was just proof that what he had was real–and therefore, worth living. Which wasn't bad at all for the walking undead.


End file.
